instrumental
by ilarual
Summary: Until that moment, it didn't occur to her that she wouldn't be Mizuchi anymore.


**A/N-** Well, here it is, my fanfic debut in the Noragami fandom! I suspect I'll be writing a lot more for Noragami because I've tripped and fallen face-first into feelings hell, but this turned out to be the first concept that bit me hard enough to be written. I'm fascinated by Mizuchi/Nora/Hiiro and I really wanted to get into her head a little bit.

* * *

 _Special._

Her understanding of herself has always been defined by this idea. It's a word that doesn't have real context at first. She becomes aware of herself, her existence, suddenly. It is not bewildering or disorienting. She simply _becomes_ , just like that, there in the darkness, and he is there, and she knows him as Father.

"You are very special," he tells her, "because you belong to me, and I have named you Mizuchi."

She is a shinki, he tells her, a divine instrument destined for service to a god. He is not a god, he tells her, but he is preparing her to serve such a god as the world has never seen. He teaches her to work, teaches her all the secrets of heaven he knows, promises her that sheᅳ special girl, good childᅳ will learn so many more, in time.

 _You are special_ , he says. _You do not have a weak, flawed human heart_.

The word _special_ becomes synonymous with superiority.

.

She has existed in her current formᅳ she considers it "current" because as a shinki she must have been something else first, right?ᅳ for perhaps five years when Father comes for her and tells her it is time to meet someone.

"Who, Father?" she asks.

"His name is Yaboku," he says, "and he is a god. He is going to give you a name."

"But my name is Mizuchi," she says. She doesn't know why, but her entire self rebels against the idea of changing her name.

"And you will still be Mizuchi," Father tells her sternly, "but Yaboku will be the god you serve now, and it is his right and privilege to name you as he chooses."

She knew that, had been told that as a shinki she was destined to serve a god, but until that moment, it didn't occur to her that she wouldn't be Mizuchi anymore. She likes her Self, likes being Mizuchi. She doesn't want to be someone else.

She resolves to hate Yaboku forever.

Only…

.

Yaboku is amazingly difficult to hate. He is good-tempered, a tiny god a little younger than she appears to be. He is comprised entirely of skinned knees and smiles and huge blue eyes, and the first time they play together, he is delighted and throws himself at her the moment he calls her to revert. She has never been hugged before, never really thought she would enjoy such a thing, but Yaboku is warm, and when he declares her to be his "favorite," something in her goes soft in the oddest way.

Her Father is his Father too, apparently, and from that day on she lives with them together. Every so often Father calls her by her first name and they go out to work like they used to, but mostly she is allowed to play with Yaboku. She enjoys that the most of all. Despite herself, she loves the name he gave her: _Hiiro_. And her vessel, the Hiki... it's nicer than the monk's staff she becomes in Father's hands. She feels freer in Yaboku's hands, far more deadly, but less poisonous. Cutting down mere useless humans feels so much better than her work with Father; she knows that the bond between shinki and god is only supposed to flow one way, but deep down she feels that it's not true, because Yaboku brings out something in her.

If asked (and no one would ever think to ask, not even Yaboku) she would say that she is something like a sister to him. She isn't sure if that's an appropriate relationship to have with a master, but it's certainly how he _treats_ her. She's his playmate, at the very least, someone to laugh with.

Father, though, says she is his keeper. It is her job as his first-ever guidepost to lead him and make sure he does as Father says. The title makes her feel important, and Yaboku does seem to require an awful lot of looking-after. He's enthusiastic and endlessly eager to please, a bit like a puppy, but he also seems to be just as easily distracted. One of Father's important rules is that Yaboku is not to speak to others, but he's always forgetting himself. Pleas for mercy in particular seem to appeal to him. She finds them disgusting, the pathetic snivelling of lesser beings, but something about the useless humans begging for their lives seems to intrigue him. She doesn't know if it's because he's a god or because he is Yaboku, but she doesn't like it. The two of them are so much more; he shouldn't be so eager to listen to the cries of living humans.

Father says she doesn't have a weak, flawed human heart, but she sometimes wonders if Yaboku might. He certainly seems to have all kinds of feelings that she doesn'tᅳ most of them directed at herself or Father in the form of enthusiastic displays of affection. It's baffling to her. She doesn't really understand his warm heart. But Yaboku's obvious tenderness for her makes her feel… _special_.

It's the first time the word has real, tangible meaning.

.

Yaboku has another shinki.

She discovers on accident one evening when he doesn't come home at dark like he is supposed to, and Father sends her out to find him. It doesn't take her long to find him, standing beside a little stream catching fireflies with some girl. The stranger is clearly a shinki as wellᅳ the name branded against the back of her neck, revealed when her hair is swept aside, tells allᅳ a pretty girl who probably died around age eighteen or nineteen, with beads in her hair and laughing eyes.

Yaboku is clinging to her fingers, smiling that winsome smile of his and looking utterly content. It makes her silent heart clench to see, because Yaboku has always been one to smile easily, but that smile was always directed at her. His smiles have _always_ been for her. It's Father's praise he wantsᅳ she understands, she wants that tooᅳ but she's the one who hears his laugh and puts the light of the stars in those eyes. But now he's smiling just like that up at this stranger.

His question, months ago, about shinki without names, resurfaces in her memories. This girl must be why he asked.

This girl must be why he hasn't wanted to play with her anymore.

She hisses, and they must hear her because Yaboku turns to look curiously into the gloom, but she has become one with the water of the stream and even his piercing god's eyes cannot see her.

All this time, Yaboku looked at her like he understood how special she was, but maybe he never really saw her at all.

.

What happened to Sakura was not her fault. Father never told her what would happen when Yaboku revealed the other shinki's living name.

But that doesn't mean she's sorry it happened.

He asks to be called Yato, now, because that's the name Sakura gave him. Father refuses, says it's disgusting for a god to be given a name by their shinki, but she doesn't mind. Those sunshiney smiles vanish for a long time, but when she calls him by the name he's chosen, some of the warmth creeps back into the way he looks at her.

They might both belong to Father, but when she can get him to smile again, she feels like maybe a little piece of him belongs to _her_ , too.

.

Yato leaves.

It's perhaps three hundred years after he named her; he looks like he's about fourteen as the living measure these things, and she's barely aged at all. Seeing him slowly, slowly surpass her in height has been strange, but even stranger is the day he walks out the door and doesn't come back.

After three months, she asks Father to go after him, but Father refuses. "He'll come back on his own," he tells her. "But while he's gone, we have work to do."

This work is different from what they have done before. She is put in the way of another godᅳ Ryujin is the first, found deep underwater in a place she alone among shinki could have ever hoped to reach himᅳ and tempts him into naming her. _He never ascends to the surface_ , she reminds him at Father's behest. _He needs someone to watch the goings-on in Takamagahara for him, after all, and the ocean spirit he keeps as his familiar is too conspicuous._

And so another name appears in red lettering on her skin. It itches, it doesn't feel as nice as Hiiro, but she can't undo it.

It's about this time that she learns what a _Nora_ is. A stray. A shinki with many names, many masters. Someone special. Someone _detestable_.

Yato made her into this. He put that second name on her. And yet she doesn't hate him for it. Not yet.

.

Yato returns. He offers no explanations and no apologies, but he stays with them for a decade before becoming restless and leaving again.

It goes on for three centuries like this. Father changes faces, she changes names, and Yato…

Well, he doesn't seem to change at all, but at the same time he's completely different. He's recovered his smile somewhere along the line, though the dark emptiness that used to cover his face has moved to his eyes instead. When Father asks, he takes her out like he used to and they cut down the weak and the wicked alikeᅳ but Yato will only kill on command. He doesn't take lives with the indiscriminate joy they used to share anymore; he will only kill if someone wishes for it first. She understands why, but she doesn't _understand_. It's not like it matters, anyway.

Names pile up on her skin. Names from Takemikazuchi, from Ame-no-Koyami, from Ebisu and Hachiman and Fujin and so many others. At first they appear mostly on her body, beneath her clothes, but eventually they crawl down her arms, down her legs, and peek up above her collar. Only her face remains bare, but it doesn't matter. She's marked plain as day anyway.

She wears _Nora_ like a name of its own, now, the first name she truly _hates_. There are plenty of noras out there, but she is _the_ nora, the one who can always be relied on for anything, even work not even a regular nora is fit for.

Yato has made her into this. He is the one who branded her with a second name, oh so long ago. But Yato has also been the only god who ever saw her as more than the names on her skin. He calls her Nora too, now, whenever she finds him (and Father often asks her to find him), but she can see her name in his eyes when he looks at herᅳ her _true_ name, Hiiro.

Even when they're apart, now, even when he's off doing odd jobs, deluding himself with the lie of fleeting independence, she knows that they'll always be together.

After all, they're both just tools for Father to use, aren't they? He might not have accepted that, but she has, and it's fine. Because after all, being useful is its own sort of speciality, isn't it? And Yatoᅳ Yabokuᅳ will understand that sooner or later. In the meantime, though, watching him struggle is kind of cute.

.

She never expected Iki Hiyori or the boy named Yuki.


End file.
